Starship Troopers (4 page)

I didn’t say anything. None of it was news to me; I’d thought about it. Father stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Son, don’t think I don’t sympathize with you; I do. But look at the real facts. If there were a war, I’ll be the first to cheer you on -- and to put the business on a war footing. But there isn’t, and praise God there never will be again. We’ve outgrown wars. This planet is now peaceful and happy and we enjoy good enough relations with other planets. So what is this so called ‘Federal Service’? Parasitism, pure and simple. A functionless organ, utterly obsolete, living on the taxpayers. A decidedly expensive way for inferior people who otherwise would be unemployed to live at public expense for a term of years, then give themselves airs for the rest of their lives. Is that what you want to do?”

“Carl isn’t inferior!”

“Sorry. No, he’s a fine boy . . . but misguided.” He frowned, and then smiled. “Son, I had intended to keep something as a surprise for you -- a graduation present. But I’m going to tell you now so that you can put this nonsense out of your mind more easily. Not that I am afraid of what you might do; I have confidence in your basic good sense, even at your tender years. But you are troubled. I know—and this will clear it away. Can you guess what it is?”

“Uh, no.”

He grinned. “A vacation trip to Mars.”

I must have looked stunned. “Golly, Father, I had no idea—“

“I meant to surprise you and I see I did. I know how you kids feel about travel, though it beats me what anyone sees in it after the first time out. But this is a good time for you to do it -- by yourself; did I mention that? -- and get it out of your system . . . because you’ll be hard-pressed to get in even a week on Luna once you take up your responsibilities.” He picked up his paper. “No, don’t thank me. Just run along and let me finish my paper -- I’ve got some gentlemen coming in this evening, shortly. Business.”

I ran along. I guess he thought that settled it . . . and I suppose I did, too. Mars! And on my own! But I didn’t tell Carl about it; I had a sneaking suspicion that he would regard it as a bribe. Well, maybe it was. Instead I simply told him that my father and I seemed to have different ideas about it.

“Yeah,” he answered, “so does mine. But it’s my life.”

I thought about it during the last session of our class in History and

Moral Philosophy. H. & M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to take it but nobody had to pass it -- and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a question. Then the argument would start.

But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”

“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”

They had tangled before -- since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”

“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral— doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

He sighed. “Another year, another class -- and, for me, another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.” Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. “You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?”

“The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”

“The exact words of the book,” he said scornfully. “But do you understand it? Do you believe it?”

“Uh, I don’t know, sir.”

“Of course you don’t! I doubt if any of you here would recognize ‘civic virtue’ if it came up and barked in your face!” He glanced at his watch. “And that is all, a final all. Perhaps we shall meet again under happier circumstances. Dismissed.”

Graduation right after that and three days later my birthday, followed in less than a week by Carl’s birthday—and I still hadn’t told Carl that I wasn’t joining up. I’m sure he assumed that I would not, but we didn’t discuss it out loud -- embarrassing. I simply arranged to meet him the day after his birthday and we went down to the recruiting office together.

On the steps of the Federal Building we ran into Carmencita Ibanez, a classmate of ours and one of the nice things about being a member of a race with two sexes. Carmen wasn’t my girl -- she wasn’t anybody’s girl; she never made two dates in a row with the same boy and treated all of us with equal sweetness and rather impersonally. But I knew her pretty well, as she often came over and used our swimming pool, because it was Olympic length— sometimes with one boy, sometimes with another. Or alone, as Mother urged her to—Mother considered her “a good influence.” For once she was right.

She saw us and waited, dimpling. “Hi, fellows!”

“Hello, Ochee Chyornya,” I answered. “What brings you here?”

“Can’t you guess? Today is my birthday.”

“Huh? Happy returns!”

“So I’m joining up.”

“Oh . . .” I think Carl was as surprised as I was. But Carmencita was

like that. She never gossiped and she kept her own affairs to herself. “No foolin’?” I added, brilliantly.

“Why should I be fooling? I’m going to be a spaceship pilot—at least I’m going to try for it.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t make it,” Carl said quickly. He was right

I know now just how right he was. Carmen was small and neat, perfect health and perfect reflexes -- she could make a competitive diving routine look easy—and she was quick at mathematics. Me, I tapered off with a “C” in algebra and a “B” in business arithmetic; she took all the math our school offered and a tutored advance course on the side. But it had never occurred to me to wonder why. Fact was, little Carmen was so ornamental that you just never thought about her being useful.

“We—Uh, I,” said Carl, “am here to join up, too.”

“And me,” I agreed. “Both of us.” No, I hadn’t made any decision; my mouth was leading its own life.

“Oh, wonderful!”

“And I’m going to buck for space pilot, too,” I added firmly.

She didn’t laugh. She answered very seriously, “Oh, how grand! Perhaps in training we’ll run into each other. I hope.”

“Collision courses?” asked Carl. “That’s a no-good way to pilot.”

“Don’t be silly, Carl. On the ground, of course. Are you going to be a pilot, too?”

“Me?” Carl answered. “I’m no truck driver. You know me—Starside R & D, if they’ll have me. Electronics.”

“ ‘Truck driver’ indeed! I hope they stick you out on Pluto and let you freeze. No, I don’t—good luck! Let’s go in, shall we?”

The recruiting station was inside a railing in the rotunda. A fleet sergeant sat at a desk there, in dress uniform, gaudy as a circus. His chest was loaded with ribbons I couldn’t read. But his right arm was off so short that his tunic had been tailored without any sleeve at all . . . and, when you came up to the rail, you could see that he had no legs.

It didn’t seem to bother him. Carl said, “Good morning. I want to join up.”

“Me, too,” I added.

He ignored us. He managed to bow while sitting down and said, “Good morning, young lady. What can I do for you?”

“I want to join up, too.”

He smiled. “Good girl! If you’ll just scoot up to room 201 and ask for

Major Rojas, she’ll take care of you.” He looked her up and down. “Pilot?”

“If possible.”

“You look like one. Well, see Miss Rojas.”

She left, with thanks to him and a see-you-later to us; he turned his attention to us, sized us up with a total absence of the pleasure he had shown in little Carmen. “So?” he said. “For what? Labor battalions?”

“Oh, no!” I said. “I’m going to be a pilot.”

He stared at me and simply turned his eyes away. “You?”

“I’m interested in the Research and Development Corps,” Carl said soberly, “especially electronics. I understand the chances are pretty good.”

“They are if you can cut it,” the Fleet Sergeant said grimly, “and not if you don’t have what it takes, both in preparation and ability. Look, boys, have you any idea why they have me out here in front?”

I didn’t understand him. Carl said, “Why?”

“Because the government doesn’t care one bucket of swill whether you join or not! Because it has become stylish, with some people -- too many people—to serve a term and earn a franchise and be able to wear a ribbon in your lapel which says that you’re a vet’ran . . . whether you’ve ever seen combat or not. But if you want to serve and I can’t talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that’s your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, shall have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren’t just glorified K. P. You can’t all be real military men; we don’t need that many and most of the volunteers aren’t number-one soldier material anyhow. Got any idea what it takes to make a soldier?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Most people think that all it takes is two hands and two feet and a stupid mind. Maybe so, for cannon fodder. Possibly that was all that Julius Caesar required. But a private soldier today is a specialist so highly skilled that he would rate ‘master’ in any other trade; we can’t afford stupid ones. So for those who insist on serving their term -- but haven’t got what we want and must have -- we’ve had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will either run ‘em home with their tails between their legs and their terms uncompleted . . . or at the very least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they’ve paid a high price for it. Take that young lady who was here—wants to be a pilot. I hope she makes it; we always need good pilots, not enough of ‘em. Maybe she will.

But if she misses, she may wind up in Antarctica, her pretty eyes red from never seeing anything but artificial light and her knuckles callused from hard, dirty work.”

I wanted to tell him that the least Carmencita could get was computer programmer for the sky watch; she really was a whiz at math. But he was talking.

“So they put me out here to discourage you boys. Look at this.” He shoved his chair around to make sure that we could see that he was legless. “Let’s assume that you don’t wind up digging tunnels on Luna or playing human guinea pig for new diseases through sheer lack of talent; suppose we do make a fighting man out of you. Take a look at me—this is what you may buy . . . if you don’t buy the whole farm and cause your folks to receive a ‘deeply regret’ telegram. Which is more likely, because these days, in training or in combat, there aren’t many wounded. If you buy it at all, they likely throw in a coffin—I’m the rare exception; I was lucky . . . though maybe you wouldn’t call it luck.”

He paused, then added, “So why don’t you boys go home, go to college, and then go be chemists or insurance brokers or whatever? A term of service isn’t a kiddie camp; it’s either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime . . . or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof. Not a vacation. Not a romantic adventure. Well?”

Carl said, “I’m here to join up.”

“Me, too.”

“You realize that you aren’t allowed to pick your service?”

Carl said, “I thought we could state our preferences?”

“Certainly. And that’s the last choice you’ll make until the end of your term. The placement officer pays attention to your choice, too. First thing he does is to check whether there’s any demand for left-handed glass blowers this week—that being what you think would make you happy. Having reluctantly conceded that there is a need for your choice—probably at the bottom of the Pacific -- he then tests you for innate ability and preparation. About once in twenty times he is forced to admit that everything matches and you get the job . . . until some practical joker gives you dispatch orders to do something very different. But the other nineteen times he turns you down and decides that you are just what they have been needing to field-test survival equipment on Titan.” He added meditatively, “It’s chilly on Titan. And it’s amazing how often experimental equipment fails to work. Have to have real field tests, though -- laboratories just never get all the answers.”

“I can qualify for electronics,” Carl said firmly, “if there are jobs open in it.”

“So? And how about you, bub?”

I hesitated—and suddenly realized that, if I didn’t take a swing at it, I would wonder all my life whether I was anything but the boss’s son.

“I’m going to chance it.”

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. Got your birth certificates with you? And let’s see your I. D.’s.”

Ten minutes later, still not sworn in, we were on the top floor being prodded and poked and fluoroscoped. I decided that the idea of a physical examination is that, if you aren’t ill, then they do their darnedest to make you ill. If the attempt fails, you’re in.

I asked one of the doctors what percentage of the victims flunked the physical. He looked startled. “Why, we never fail anyone. The law doesn’t permit us to.”